How To Remove Personal Security Virus From Windows Computer

A client of mine called me in a panic yesterday because a laptop he uses for work got infected with the Personal Security virus. Personal Security is a nasty virus, also sometimes called antispyware or malware, that takes over your computer and attempts to get you to purchase the software. The virus actually makes the end user think that it is legit software and they are only doing you a favor by protecting your computer however this is not the case. Below I describe things that the virus will do to blend in to Windows as well as a method I have discovered as one of the easier ways to remove it.

Personal Security Virus: How It Infects Windows Computers

So there are many things that Personal Security will do not only to make it seem like legit software but also things it will do to block users from removing it. I list some of these below however I am sure there are many others ways that it infects peoples computers so if you know of other ways that this has infected your computer other than the ones I list below please leave those in the comments section of this post. The more information we can share to users about this virus the better so more people can learn what to watch out for.

Service Taskbar Display: One thing that Personal Security does is it will display a taskbar icon to make you think that it is something that should be running. The image below shows what the icon looks like along with what is displayed when you hover the icon in the taskbar.

Program Display: Personal Security will display in Windows Control Panel “Add/Remove Programs” as a program that has been installed as displayed below.

However if you attempt to remove the application from via the Add/Remove Programs configuration window it only will display an activation window as displayed below. Again this is an attempt to get users to not only by the application but also to steal their identities.

Display Fake Virus Scan Results: The Personal Security virus is clever in the way that it displays fake virus scan results as displayed below so Windows users think their computers are infected with other viruses, trojans, spyware, or malware. While users may have other viruses or spyware the real issue at hand is the Personal Security virus.

Blocks Applications: When Personal Security has infected your computer and is active you will more than likely not be allowed to launch other applications.

Blocks Windows Task Manager: The Personal Security virus will also block many Windows functions such as Windows Task Manager. If you attempt to launch Task manager nothing will happen.

Displays Blank Desktop: Personal Security will also display a different Desktop which is another attempt at blocking access to other applications. Don’t worry when the Personal Security virus is removed all of your desktop shortcuts and files will be returned to normal.

Removing Personal Security can be a real pain if you don’t already have some form of Virus, Antispyware, or AntiMalware software installed. The easiest way I have found to remove the software is with Windows Defender however you have to stop the Personal Security process before you can actually launch Windows Defender so follow the directions below to stop the Personal Security process, download Windows Defender, and then scan your computer using Windows Defender.

Reboot Computer: First you will want to reboot your computer but before you do so make sure to read the rest of this step. When your computer reboots you are going to have quickly launch Windows Task Manager and manually kill the personal security process. I explain each step of what needs to happen after you reboot below but make sure to launch Windows Task Manager as quickly as possible or Personal Security will block access to it.

Launch Windows Task Manager: Right when you have access to your desktop launch Windows Task Manager by clicking the Start button in the lower left hand corner of your screen. Type “taskmgr” into the Run box and click enter which should launch the Windows Task Manager display window.

Stop Personal Security Process: Once Task Manager is displaying click the Processes tab and then click Image Name in the column title bar. This will organize the processes in alphabetical order. Scroll through the list and look for “psecurity.exe” which is the Personal Security process. An example of what the process will look like in Windows Task Manager is below.

Once you have located psecurity.exe highlight the process by clicking on it and then click the “End Process” button located in the lower right hand corner. This will stop Personal Security from running on your computer.

Install Windows Defender: Now visit this Microsoft site to download Windows Defender. First download Windows Defender, then double click on the downloaded file, and follow the instructions to install Windows Defender.

Launch & Scan With Windows Defender: If Windows Defender does not launch automatically after install go ahead and launch it now using the Windows Start Menu. First update the definitions file and then run a scan oon your computer.

Remove Personal Security Virus: Wait until the Windows Defender scan is completed before taking any action. Once the scan is completed it will have found at least the Personal Security virus which typically shows up as two different viruses named Trojan:Win32/FakeXPA and Trojan:Win32/Yektel.A both of which are displayed in the Windows Defender image below. To remove these viruses click the Windows Defender “Remove All” button located to the right of the scan results. Be patient because it can take quite awhile to completely remove both trojans.

If you want more details relating to the Personal Security trojans that were found click the “Review Items Detected By Scanning” below the Remove All button as displayed below.

Reboot Computer: Once Windows Defender is done removing the Personal Security trojans reboot your computer to make sure it is gone.

Hopefully you don’t run into the Personal Security virus again but if you do it shouldn’t be to bad to remove now that Windows Defender is running. I suggest keeping Windows Defender active at all times which would have saved you from getting the Personal Security virus at all.

96 Comments

I had ht Personal Security virus on my laptop yesterday. I tried many ways, and spent many hours trying to remove it. This is what worked for me..The Personal Security virus will not allow you to download any anti virus programs! You will have to download Malwarebytes anti malware onto a stick from a none infected Pc. Copy and paste it onto your infected pc somewhere. Reboot your infected pc in safe mode by pressing F8 when your pc is starting up. From there you should be able to open Malwarebytes and run a scan. When the scan is finnished remove all the infected files and that should work!!! It worked for me and I am no pc whizz. Hope this helps as I know how annoying this virus is!!!

After running the windows defender scan an (!) came up stating Definitions allow Windows Defender to detect the latest harmful or unwanted software and prevent it from running on your computer with only two options of Check for Updates Now or View troobleshooting tips on the web. I said check for updates and it asks my premission to continue forward then after a while i get this message. Error Found: Code 0x80072efe. I just want to remove this unwanted personal security virus but i just won’t let me. LOL HELLLLLLPPPP. Any ideas let me know?

I have also tried to download the updateded version of Windefender but the virus wont let me. I think I am going to have to try what one of the commet suggested by downloading on a stick from another computer but if there is a way of doing it from mine i would rather than messing up someone elses computer as well

No reason this wouldn’t work as well though if you can catch it in task manager before it launches then its much easier to simply kill the process. If you cannot start task manager before it launches all the way then renaming the folder is a great idea. Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback for others.

Awesome! Your advice on this wicked virus worked to the teee! I can’t believe that I actually did it myself even though I’m not computer savy. Anyways I just wanted to thank you bigtime because you saved me time and money. The only thing was the full scan and removal of that virus took about an hour and a half but it was worth the wait=)
Cheers!

Good to hear. Really glad you found the directions to remove the Personal Security virus. Yeah sometimes it can take awhile for the virus scan to complete with Windows Defender and then for WD to completely remove the virus but definitely worth it since it cleans everything up in a sane way. Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback.

Glad to hear you were able to get rid of the Personal Security virus. I had to try a couple times as well to get the Windows task manager launched properly before the psecurity.exe process was running. Lets hope that anyone who gets this virus removed from their computer doesn’t have to ever remove it again. We appreciate you taking the time to leave feedback.

alex, have you heard about the fix i found and works. go to my computer- disc c – find program files> common files> psecurity uninstall> uninstall…. run file uninstall. it worked for me after 2 days of hassle.

I tried your method several times Alex, I don’t know that I was quick enough with the task manager though. After reading the feedback I tried Pete’s suggestion. Worked perfectly and it only took a minute to complete! I’m glad I was able to get rid of it without having to let my boss know!

What matters if you got it removed! I figured it might be hard on some computers to get the Task Manager up quick enough and its even possible that the Personal Security Virus is getting smarter and starting earlier as well. Regardless I am thankful for others posting how they were able to rid of the virus to help others. So thanks for leaving feedback!

This is one nasty virus! When I tried to download Malwarebytes and Adaware from diferent sites it would block access to those sites, claiming they were infected. What I finally did was to go into Safe Mode – Communications (by repeatedly hitting the F8 key while rebooting). That prevented the virus from running, and I was able to download Malwarebytes. Running Malwarebytes in quick scan mode found 23 files and registry items associated with this virus. Running again in full scan mode picked up one more item. The computer has been clean ever since. Incidentally, the computer had Microsoft Security Essentials installed and running when the virus was “caught”. And a scan by MSE did not come up with anything!

Thanks for the feedback. Microsoft Security Essentials is a more in depth version of Windows Defender which when the article was written was able to locate and remove the Personal Security Virus so it is interesting to note that Microsoft Security Essentials is unable to even locate the virus at this point.

Thanks again for the feedback. Any information that will allow others to remove the Personal Security Virus is welcome.

Great to hear! Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback. The Personal Security Virus is really annoying and knowing that this article has helped people with removing it from the Windows computers is always great to hear. Our goal is to assist people with technology related problems as often as possible and whenever we receive feedback it lets us know that we are doing our job.

I assumed you checked the other article as well and if that is the case I am not sure what it is called in your instance. To date I have yet to hear of it being called something else however that is not to say that isn’t the case. The creators of the virus are definitely smart enough to update the virus as people learn to disable it. Without having access to the infected computer or being able to exactly duplicate the virus scenario you are experiencing I don’t think I am going to be able to help. What I would try to do is boot into safe mode, install malwarebytes & microsoft security essentials, and run scans when your computer boots to see if either of those virus scanners can resolve the issue for you.

Hope that helps. When you do resolve the problem and know the specific name of the virus we would love to know what it is so we can share it with others having the same issue and hopefully getting rid of the Personal Security Virus version that you have will be easier for others in the future.

Hi, Alex. I had the personal security virus yesterday, but could not get to task manager fast enough to stop it. I used Pete’s suggestion to rename the folder/file and sent it to the recycle bin. Then I permanently deleted it. I have run Windows Defender and Norton Antivirus scans. Both show the computer is running normally. The only problem I still have is that a site blocked screen keeps coming up as I move around the internet. I can get around it by hitting the back button, but it is really annoying. I can’t find another file anywhere for personal security. Unfortunately, before reading the older comments, I had just also deleted the uninstall file for personal security. Any suggestions as to what I can do to stop the blocked screen? I’m not all that computer savvy, so would appreciate any suggestions.
Thanks, Joyce

Without seeing the specific error in front of me I am not sure I will have many suggestions. You might see if someone has a Personal Security Virus cleaner software kit that will clean all Personal Security Virus files. Once you figure out how to remove the last blocked screen we would like to hear how you did it so others running into the same issue will know how to accomplish the same goal.

Alex,
I have to give it to you. You are one smart cookie!!! You and Pete both, i have a client that got the same nasty virus and I have spent hours trying everything under the sun from, tryin to reformat the hard drive which can be tricky when in my computer no CD drive is showing!! lol but anyways I tried your method and pete’s and they both work great……Thank you for taking the time to share this awesome info with the rest of us.

my computer crashed earlier this evening because of this personal security virus, It would not let me open anything, i turned off the computer and then turned it on, and when it got to the reboot menu, i pressed F11, system recovery, and recovered the system back a couple days, and it seems to be gone! (fingers crossed). I scanned with windows defender and it came up clean.

It is possible that the Personal Security Virus has added processes that it infects. Look for anything out of place that you can find. Hope you were able to remove the Personal Security Virus from your computer.

Hallelujah, I successfully removed the Personal Security Virus from my son’s comptuer over the weekend :)

Here are the steps that worked for me:
1) Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del just before the desktop icons load on the desktop in order to start Task Manager (this has to be perfectly timed as P.S. will take over if you wait too late).
2) Disable Personal Security in Task Manager.
3) Download/Save Malwarebytes to destop (neither McAfee nor Windows Defender detected the virus).
4) Run Malwarebytes with quick run to remove the virus.
5) Run Malwarebytes again using Full run to make sure you get everything (this step will take a few hours, so be patient).

Thanks for taking the time to write out the steps that you took to remove the Personal Security Virus from your sons computer. It is definitely possible that it has evolved a bit and Windows Defender will not remove some of the newer versions so thanks for listing another possibility such as Malwarebytes which is an excellent virus scanner.

If others run into issues where Windows Defender does not detect the virus then try Malwarebytes as suggested by denalley or try Avast, Microsoft Security Essentials, or any of the other free virus scanners available.

Hi, I have gotten to the step of stopping the process from running, but, I can’t get teh malwarebytes or windows defender to download, it just keeps taking me to another site, or the red page that says it is not safe pops up, any suggestions???
Desperate,
Michelle
I am in online university classes and cannot afford to buy a new computer. Help!!!!!!

If you are still being redirected to other pages that means the process has not been stopped. Once the Personal Security Virus process is stopped then you will no longer be redirected to other web pages.

Then I took another suggestion, I hit F8 while rebooting and went into safe mode. Then I went in and restored the computer to 5 days ago before being infected, it allowed that fine, now when I reboot , I cannot enter my password, for user account, it says that I cannot use text?????? UGGGGGGGG!!!! Help Please!!!!

I am not sure what you mean by it says you cannot enter the password. Did you possibly change the password in the past 5 days? Could you provide the exact error message word for word? If we can see the error message it is possible that we can assist but the information above is not detailed enough for us to provide solid suggestions.

We hope you were able to finally remove the Personal Security Virus from your computer.

I would imagine that the personal security virus has become a bit more complex and there could be one or multiple other processes running. I suggest looking for any other out of place processes that are running via Task Manager. If you locate other processes related to the virus we would like to hear what they are.

Hello,
I’ve followed the steps, I’ve downloaded windows defender but it doesn’t find any viruses!!
Just a while agou it had finded “TrojanDownloader:win32:Renos” twice
please, help me, it’s killing me!!
Thanks in advance,Ramona

As noted in some of the previous comments for this article it is possible that the virus as become more advanced and changed itself a bit. You might try some of the other free anti-virus applications such as Avast or Malwarebytes to see if either of those has an updated virus definition that will remove the virus from your computer. It has also been suggested that you can remove the Personal Security Virus from your computer by using the uninstall executable located in the Personal Security folder which is underneath Program Files on Windows. I have not verified this method but a couple other users seem to have had success simply double clicking on the uninstall executable.

Hi,
I had this personal security virus on my laptop. I found the following simple method totally effective:
1. Open My computer, choose Disk C;
2. Find Program Files=>Common Files=>PSecurityUninstall=>Uninstall
3. Run the file Uninstall.lnk

After that the virus will be removed. No need to download anything. The computer is fine and restored back.

Thanks for taking the time to post a response with your experience. I have not personally removed the Personal Security virus with the method you describe above but I have heard of numerous other people that were able to remove it in the same method. Thanks again for posting.

The Windows Defender will remove the personal security icon from the tool bar, but the program is still there. If you the method mentioned in a previous post, it will remove the virus app. You can then reboot the computer and everything should be restored to normal. I checked the taskmanager as soon as I could and the personal security was no longer there or running after the reboot.

I am glad to hear that you got rid of the Personal Security Virus. I believe there are many different variations of the virus that are now making their way around the Internet so resolving it could be done in many different ways now depending on which variation of the Personal Security Virus you have been infected with. I think one of the variations is called the XP Antispyware 2010 Virus and while it has many of the same behaviors as the Personal Security Virus it also has many things that are different.

I hope that eve n if the directions in the article do not completely remove the Personal Security Virus for people that, like you have done, they will come back and post the steps that helped them remove the Personal Security Virus or the XP Antispyware 2010 Virus from their Windows computers. The more people that offer feedback and different steps to remove these virus’s the more likely that more and more people will be able to find a resolution by visiting this article.

i used andys three step method and it worked. its only been a day and not sure how much damage was done. thank you alex and andy for your help! all my desktop returned immediately. thanks again. a great many people can survive this nasty now.

My brothers computer was infected with this virus and he could not get on the web. I was able to follow your advice and relay it to him over the phone. I am glad to say after many attempts we managed to stop the process and eventually remove it. I don’t know what we would do without people like you who are always willing to help. Thank you so much.

We are glad to hear you were able to remove the Personal Security Virus from your brothers computer. Thanks for taking the time to leave such nice feedback. Most of our articles are about issues we resolve on a daily basis so we are happy to be able to provide information to others in an attempt to help them resolve their issues as well.

oh boy what a headache it has blocked many things on here and all my short cuts on desk go off once comptuter has started i cant open the add/remove in the control panel or anything else . who ever has done this personal defender needs to be hung up to dry,this situation is not funny every dog gets its day and hopefully they get thiers

I totally agree. It really is a pain. Make sure that you do not fill out any information in the pop ups generated by the virus. Were you able to follow the steps above to remove the Personal Security Virus from your computer?

Thanks so much for the Task Manager tip. I tried several other methods to get rid of Personal Security but none of them worked until I found your solution and terminated PSecurity before it turned off Task Manager. Then AVG Free was able to run and remove the malware. I owe you big time!

No problem. Great to hear! It is nice to know when an article we have posted assisted someone in removing this extremely annoying virus/malware from their computer. Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback.

I don’t think the instructions in the article not working have anything to do with the fact that you have Vista. While I tend to agree with you that Vista isn’t the best operating system I am guessing that you just have another variation of the Personal Security Virus. Try reading through the comments as there were numerous suggestions to stop this virus provided by people where the steps above only partially worked or didn’t work at all.

Was infected with this Wednesday evening, 5-5-10. I was able to run my Webroot Antivirus, but it was unable to remove the PSecurity.exe file from the Programs subfolder Personal Security created. It did remove another section of the virus though.

When I rebooted the computer Personal Security still came up on the desktop. I tried to delete the PSecurity.exe file and met with an “Access Denied” reply. I rebooted the computer again and this time used the F11 key to enter the Recovery menu. I was lucky in that I had performed an update on Monday, 5-3-10, and selected that date as my recovery point.

When I rebooted the computer the Personal Security Virus was gone. I ran another antivirus scan and there was no trace of the virus. The computer is running fine now.

Supposedly in some forms of this virus there is even a uninstall .exe. Regardless thank you for sharing your experience and offering a different method for folks to get rid of the Personal Security Virus.

Hello,
Thanks for your esteemed comments regarding this software. It infected my computer 3-4 days back and unfortunately I had to pay the amount online to activate the same and remove virus as was stated. Can u please reply if it will cause further damage, although now it has been removed from my computer. It affected despite my computer having Windows One Care antivirus software installed.

THamk you sooooooo much this virus was a biggg pain i didnt know what to do i was almost will to pay just to get my laptop back but thank the lord we have good people in this world like you that you so much worked like a charm and god will bless you for your good deeds

I too have been infected with this nasty @#$%^ as well. I followed the steps leading up to running windows defender. Which i already had on my laptop. After running its scan,itsays, no harmful software detected, computer running normally . Any sugestions??

Is your Windows Defender up to date? Even if it is there is a chance that you have one of the newer instances of the Personal Security virus. This virus has many versions and different antivirus software cleans differrent versions of the virus. I would recommend attempting malwarebytes, windows security essentials, or any other free virus software to see if that works. You might also try reading all of the comments for this article where some other sound suggestions have been made.

Thank you Alex, for your, point by point explanation on how to download Microsoft Defender and get rid of that pesky virus Personal Security. I’m no technonerd but your good explanation enabled me to complete the whole process unassisted. Very good!

I got the PS virus yesterday. I already had the latest AVG free on the computer but it didn’t catch it. I followed your instructions and after several tries (I was too slow), I got Task Manager to stop the virus program. I then ran AVG and it failed to find anything. I then downloaded Windows Defender, updated and ran it and it also found nothing. I then did a system restore to a restore point 4 days back and the computer seems to be fine now. I ran AVG free again and found nothing. Any thoughts?

Got mine earlier this evening. Couldn’t access task manager until reading this. Got the program stopped and downloaded Windows Defender. Updated it, and it still found nothing. Updated and ran Spybot S&D, and it immediately located 3 entries.

Unfortunately we do not allow users to post phone numbers in the comment section of our articles. If you are unable to remove the virus using the article and comments from users then you should take your computer to a local computer store to get it cleaned. We also do remote support which can be set up by using the contact form on the site but there is an hourly fee. We apologize for the inconvenience of not allowing phone numbers to be posted but we not only do this for security reasons on our site but you should never post your phone number like that online as people may attempt to take advantage of you. Hope you had luck in getting your issue resolved.

Thanks for posting this. It has been posted in the previous comments a couple times and definitely works for some instances of this virus. I have also seen other instances where this does not work though. Thanks again though for taking the time to post!